The Cordillera of Dreams

Cannes Film Festival prize winner for Best Documentary, master filmmaker Patricio Guzmán's The Cordillera of Dreams completes his trilogy (with Nostalgia for the Light and The Pearl Button) investigating the relationship between historical memory, political trauma, and geography in his native Chile. Focusing on the imposing landscape of the Andes that run the length of the country's Eastern border, at once isolating and magisterial, the Cordillera serves as an enigmatic focal point around which Guzmán contemplates the enduring legacy of the 1973 military coup d état. Along the way, Guzmán interviews artists, writers, and documentarians, collecting their conflicted feelings towards the Cordillera and its relationship to Chilean national identity and history. The film's prominent moral voice is Pablo Salas, a filmmaker and archivist who has worked since the 1980s to document acts of political resistance and state violence. Looking at the past and future, Guzmán's work rescues Chile from historical amnesia. While the Cordillera forms an omnipresent backdrop to the Chilean landscape, much of it is privately owned and inaccessible mirror the country's severe economic inequality. Unflinching in its presentation of today s Chile, The Cordillera of Dreams moves beyond despair and looks towards the possibilities of political change.